Spam copy editor needed

Ms. Camille notes that spammers are getting cleverer at covering up their dirty tracks by incorporating grammatically correct sentences (but still fairly obscure) into the body and subject lines.

Why they are doing this, of course, is because the newer Bayesian filters are able to detect the nonsense messages and appropriately filter and delete them. Still, now that they are using real sentences, what is a spammer to do? After all, when I think of a spammer, I think of a hulking sociopath sitting in his trailer with his fold-out kitchen counter covered in beer cans and chicken bones. The spammer of my imagination is not someone who is going to be able to work up clever prose for his subject line.

So perhaps we can invent a new profession: the spam copy editor! For the LOW FEE of $10o do1lars per hundr3d th0usand mailings, I w1ll write you a BULK MAIL subject line WORT3Y of SHAKESPEARE!!

Simple Things

As the old man walked along the beach at dawn,
he could see someone far down the beach flinging something into the ocean,
Time and again,
the person would bend over, pick up something, stand up,
and throw it into the water.
Finally the old man caught up to the young man,
and asked him why he was doing this.
The young man replied that the stranded starfish would die if left in the morning sun.
"But the beach goes on for miles, and there are millions of Starfish."
retorted the old man. "How can you really make a difference?"
The young man looked at the starfish in his hand
and then he threw it into the safety of the waves as he replied
"It makes a difference to this one."

(The Starthrower, by Loren Eisley)

Francis Collins, the geneticist whose The Language of God I am currently reading, describes a trip he made as a relief worker in Africa in the chapter "Truth Seekers." As a western doctor, he knew there were limitations to what he was going to be able to accomplish. The health care system was not going to be the same as in the developed world. Still, he imagined he was going to do great things, maybe save all kinds of people.

The reality was more brutal, and he found himself worn out by the apparent hopelessness of the situation. "I grew more and more discouraged," he wrote, "wondering why I had ever thought that this trip would be a good thing."

Then one day, a farmer came in near death. He recognized the symptoms right away of something called a "paradoxical pulse", probably brought on by tuberculosis. He knew that the only treatment available was something a cardio specialist would normally do. Collins wasn't qualified for the procedure. But it was the only way to save him. So using a large needle, he bore a hole in the man's chest, drew out the fluid, and the man's symptoms subsided.

The next day, the young farmer told him, "I get the sense you are wondering why you came here. I have an answer for you. You came here for one reason. You came here for me." (You can hear Collins tell this story in his own words here.)

Collins learned what so few of us do. We are all called to do great things. But the great things we are meant to do are not necessarily things that will change the world, dramatically altering the flow of history. Maybe the great thing we are meant to do will only save one person; maybe the great thing we will do will be known only to God - maybe we won't even be privileged to know what it is, or when it happened. But live every moment like it is your great thing, your vocation. Every moment you face may be the one reason you were put on this Earth.

So live every second like it is the one thing you are here to do. For who knows? Maybe it is.

The Language of God

I am reading a book called "The Language of God" by Francis Collins, who was the head of the Human Genome Project, the team that produced a map of the entire genetic code of the human species. It was a monumental achievement, modern medicine's "landing on the moon" moment in terms of the scale of the accomplishment.

Collins makes the case that being a believer does not mean you have to disbelieve science, or even segment it off to a different part of your mind - he explicity disavows Stephen Jay Gould's suggestion that science and theology are non-overlapping disciplines. He then goes through the most common alternatives put before the modern believer - creationism, intelligent design, or atheism, and rejects them all. He makes the strong case that we can recognize God, even the traditional conception of Abraham's God and not just the clockwinder of the Deists, in the world as we know it.

Resorting to C.S. Lewis and Augustine, he makes the case for an involved God, but a God who nonetheless created the universe as a self-running system that does not require numerous acts of special creation or intervention in order to exist. He does not argue that this makes God uninvolved today; Collins is prepared to accept that miraculous intervention does exist, but for its own sake - and not as something God needs to do to prop up the universe. A good architect who puts up a house shouldn't need to constantly come back and put up supports and repair the foundation, just to keep the house standing.

I'm only halfway into it, but I think Collins is quite courageous. Many of his scientific contemporaries, such as Richard Dawkins, are violently hostile to religion, and Collins will surely pay a price as a scientist for writing an unabashedly pro-religious work. At the same time, Collins forcefully rejects creationism and the "irreducible complexity" of proponents such as Michael Behe. 

Personally, I think that religion that insists on rejecting science is doing great harm. I was kept mired in a painful agnostic existence for a decade because of Christians at my work who led me to believe that accepting modern science was incompatible with Christianity. I had spent enough time reading about paleo-anthropology and cosmology that I had no way of accepting the idea that the Earth was 6,000 years old, and that dinosaurs chased Adam around. And the people who insist on this being the case are quite literally keeping people like me from God.

"Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter." (Luke 11:52)

The cat nurse

I am thinking - knock on wood - there is a chance he might pull through. He's getting steadier on his back legs. The first day, he could hardly move and kept falling over. But slowly he's gone from immobile to just awkward, and he doesn't just give up and sit there now - his spirits have risen, and if he wants to go somewhere, he goes there, even if he looks funny doing it. Every day, his back legs are getting stronger.

Last night, on the way home from the rehearsal, I tried to think of something he'd love so much that he'd eat it, even if he has been disinclined to eat lately. Tuna, I thought, and so I stopped by the store on the way home, bought myself Sunchips, and him, a can of tuna.  Sure enough, he gobbled it down. That morning, I had set out milk for him, and he had lapped up that as well. And best of all, this morning he begged at his dish! Begged! So he got more tuna out of me.

When I talked to my father over Skype yesterday, he thought that perhaps Dusty had had a stroke. It makes sense. Four days ago he looked like he had lain down to die. He could hardly move, see, or do much more than lift his head in a sickly way. Now he's just a stiff and clumsy version of his old self.

We are on bonus time with a much-loved kitty who is already twenty, and for this, I believe we are very fortunate. :-)

The accompanist

I don't know how to say no, and our youth group asked me to accompany them for four hymns they are singing in their play. So teaching kids to sing is how I spent my Friday evening. One thing I will note about young teenagers and singing. The young ladies will sing. It takes a bit of coaxing, but they'll do it.

The young lads? They don't sing. They don't have it in 'em. I told them, when we were trying to get them to sing "Silent Night" that last year at midnight I had a guy who is normally with a heavy metal band singing it. And that still didn't make 'em sing. :-)

My baby

He's still hanging in there. Last night he slept between my wife and I, just like he used to. I got him to drink a little a few moments ago. The first time he's done that in a couple of days. He even hobbled down to the top of the entryway stairs to wait for mommy, which he'll do when one of us is out. But I'm not optimistic enough to think he's rallying. At this age, it is just too big a hurdle.

Most people don't understand why I would be as upset about this as I am. But if you have a cat, one like mine, you know what I mean.

Preparing to say goodbye to an old friend

I think my cat is on his last legs. We've had him since the eighties, a long ago decade in another century, and he has been a healthy twenty years old. Until now.

He stopped eating yesterday, seems to have trouble getting his back legs to cooperate with what he wants to do. He does not seem uncomfortable, but he seems resigned to something, and wouldn't take a drink when we put his glass next to him (yes, he prefers to drink out of a glass. If it is good enough for us, I guess.)

I am not quite ready for this. If love alone could save him, I would love him until he is well, and I wouldn't let go. But it does not work that way. I have to learn to say goodbye to a friend we have had in our lives longer than most of our friends and acquaintances. I have to. But I do not want to.

That other Christian Story

A few years ago, as we came upon a holy season (Lent), a movie was released that had been anticipated a long time, and which had fanned great controversy. I speak of course of "The Passion of the Christ."

But we have another seminal story, a much less controversial one, and in many ways, even more beloved. And it is as we approach another holy season (this time Advent), that a film promises to flesh out the tale for us: The Nativity Story. The trailer depicts Mary and Joseph not as icons adorning the sanctuary or manger scene, as we are used to seeing them, but as flesh and blood ordinary people, barely able to comprehend the enormous thing they know they've been swept up in.



I personally think a film like this is worth supporting, because film makers have to make money. And if we don't go to see movies like this, they'll stop making them for us. :-)

Jacob's Ladder

One of my many guiding lights are the words to a song that was actually meant to take a poke at religion. The song is "Jacob's Ladder", and it was recorded by Huey Lewis back in the eighties. And even though this song badly misrepresents Christian faith and what it can mean, there is one poignant line in the song.

"Step by step, rung by rung… all I want for tomorrow is to get it better than today"

In Genesis, Jacob sees a ladder in a dream. The ladder goes up, up, out of sight, all the way up to that impossible height that is heaven. Coming up and down the ladder (or perhaps staircase is a better word) are angels bearing messages. And standing right beside him is God, who says to Jacob, "Know that I am with you; I will protect you wherever you go, and bring you back to this land. I will never leave you until I have done what I promised you."

Jacob's reaction is to simply say, "Truly, the Lord is in this spot, although I did not know it!"

Isn't that how it always is? God is always there, and we just don't know it, we just don't see it. Whether the reason for that is the dim eyes in our spirit, our lack of spiritual sensitivity, or the hardness of heart that comes from the way our lives scar the soul, there is a blindness to the presence of God that sets in; the brilliant awareness we had of it as a child, the wonder at all the new things we experienced even if we couldn't put a finger on it. Increasingly, this is lost to us - lost in the maelstrom of an over-stimulating culture that assaults our senses, and our own accumulated grief, a grief which we no longer know how to heal from.

The skills need to heal that grief and to crack the opacity of our lives are ancient skills, but simple ones we all have in some measure already: empathy, tenderness, compassion, silence, wisdom, and above all humility: humility before others and before God. In the silence of the early morning, the matins would have us say, "O Lord, open my lips and let my mouth proclaim your praise!"

Instead, our cares and worries are the first things at our throat; how will I get through this day? How will I even get out the door on time?

Let it go.

For much of the last year, I've been in what could only be described as a spiritual funk. I've been so focused about what has been wrong on my walk, what I haven't yet fixed, and how I might recharge those batteries, that I've forgotten the one essential fact. I don't walk it alone. I don't fix it. And I don't recharge those batteries. I've been so busy wondering how a person goes about their spiritual renovations, that I forgot that it wasn't a person who fixed it up in the first place at all. It was God.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going, you know the way." (John 14:1-4)

As I prepare for the next Praise and Worship night I am leading, there are many signs that I am where I am supposed to be, and in them, I find I am renewed. The blessings I have struggled so hard for are just there, were just there... laying in the desert like Jacob's Ladder. They were there all along, "though I did not know it" like Jacob. And so I climb, step by step, rung by rung. Climbing and climbing. I can't see the top yet, and perhaps am not meant to while my heart still beats. But I do know the way.

And the way is up, up, into the clouds.

Sweet Schadenfreude

Is it OK to delight in someone's misfortune? It is when that someone is O.J. Simpson, trying to profit off of the Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman killings, for which he was found civilly responsible.

O.J. is not going to get the chance to explain how he "hypothetically" killed the pair. He can tell the devil when he meets him.

The blue baby

It was thirteen years ago this day my wife brought into the world my
blue baby - our younger one. And what a delightful young woman she's
grown to be: interested in so much, particularly horses; beautiful,
and yet shy and sensitive; yet private and dignified.

I wrote her a letter today, telling her about the great happiness her
presence in my life has been. Why take the chance that you'll never
tell the ones you love just what it is they meant to you?

The Neanderthals

Over the years, we have learned many interesting things about the Neanderthals.

• We've learned that they probably could speak as well as we do, because they appear to have had the anatomy for it and technological skills such as advanced tar brewing that suggest it.
• We know they interacted with modern humans. The Chattelperonian tool flaking technology of some later Neanderthals seems to be a hybrid of their own Mousterian technique and the technique then used by modern humans. This suggests trade and even the exchange of skills between the two kinds of humans.

Now we've potentially learned something new. Neanderthals interbred with us.

A gene controlling the regulation of brain size that appears in about 70% of living human beings appears to have been injected into our gene pool from a non-Homo Sapiens source approximately 37,000 years ago. That means about 70% of us probably have a little Neanderthal in our blood!

The Creation (James Weldon Johnson)

And God stepped out on space,
And he looked around and said:
I'm lonely -
I'll make me a world.

And far as the eye of God could see
Darkness covered everything,
Blacker than a hundred midnights
Down in a cypress swamp.

Then God smiled,
And the light broke,
And the darkness rolled up on one side,
And the light stood shining on the other,
And God said: That's good!

Then God reached out and took the light in his hands,
And God rolled the light around in his hands
Until he made the sun;
And he set that sun a-blazing in the heavens.
And the light that was left from making the sun
God gathered it up in a shining ball
And flung it against the darkness,
Spangling the night with the moon and stars.
Then down between
The darkness and the light
He hurled the world;
And God said: That's good!

Then God himself stepped down -
And the sun was on his right hand,
And the moon was on his left;
The stars were clustered about his head,
And the earth was under his feet.
And God walked, and where he trod
His footsteps hollowed the valleys out
And bulged the mountains up.

Then he stopped and looked and saw
That the earth was hot and barren.
So God stepped over to the edge of the world
And he spat out the seven seas -
He batted his eyes, and the lightnings flashed -
He clapped his hands, and the thunders rolled -
And the waters above the earth came down,
The cooling waters came down.

Then the green grass sprouted,
And the little red flowers blossomed,
The pine tree pointed his finger to the sky,
And the oak spread out his arms,
The lakes cuddled down in the hollows of the ground,
And the rivers ran down to the sea;
And God smiled again,
And the rainbow appeared,
And curled itself around his shoulder.

The God raised his arm and he waved his hand
Over the sea and over the land,
And he said: Bring forth! Bring forth!
And quicker than God could drop his hand,
Fishes and fowls
And beasts and birds
Swam the rivers and the seas,
Roamed the forests and the woods,
And split the air with their wings.
And God said: That's good!

Then God walked around,
And God looked around
On all that he had made.
He looked at his sun,
And he looked at his moon,
And he looked at his little stars;
He looked on his world
With all its living things,
And God said: I'm lonely still.

Then God sat down -
On the side of a hill where he could think;
By a deep, wide river he sat down;
With his head in his hands,
God thought and thought,
Till he thought: I'll make me a man!

Up from the bed of the river
God scooped the clay;
And by the bank of the river
He kneeled him down;
And there the great God Almighty
Who lit the sun and fixed it in the sky,
Who flung the stars to the most far corner of the night,
Who rounded the earth in the middle of his hand;
This Great God,
Like a mammy bending over her baby,
Kneeled down in the dust
Toiling over a lump of clay
Till he shaped it in his own image;

Then into it he blew the breath of life,
And man became a living soul.
Amen. Amen.

(The Creation, from "God's Trombones", by James Weldon Johnson)

Hi-tech T-shirt turns air guitar into the real thing | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

You know, I've carefully made guitar decisions, choosing the right instruments, effects processors, and amplifiers. I'd even come to think I'd made the right choices.

 Turns out all I really needed was a shirt.

Hi-tech T-shirt turns air guitar into the real thing | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

Last day of forty

Today is my last day of being forty. Which means I will be, as my niece pointed out to me with glee last night, "more than forty." The evening I turned forty, I sat and watched a fiery red sunset on a perfectly calm evening. It was a reminder to me that some things become very beautiful as they fade.

And my life has become very beautiful indeed. If I were to sit down next to that slightly younger version of me today and tell him, "Dude, you'll be a grandfather before the year is out," I am sure Younger-Me could scarcely believe it. Things are changing, and the old patterns of my wife and I's lives are shifting.  I can't tell yet exactly where it is going to go, but I don't fear it. I'm looking forward to it.

Tooth Finding Shakes Human Family Tree - Forbes.com

Grass for dinner again? maybe not. ;-)

Link to Tooth Finding Shakes Human Family Tree - Forbes.com

UK scientists ask permission to create human-cow hybrid

You know, every once in a while you see a headline that reminds you why some people might have an issue or two with that whole stem cell thing.

UK scientists ask permission to create human-cow hybrid - 07 November 2006 - New Scientist

Politics

"Bipartisanship" is a word you don't hear in Canada. American politics is downright cordial compared to Canadian politics. Sure, congressional elections may mean negative ads and angry televised debates, but once that is done, US politicians tend to settle down and cooperate with those in other political parties.

Not so in Canada. Every day is an election campaign. Because all power is essentially consolidated in the House of Commons (we have a senate and a Governor General, but no real power sits in those offices), the machinery of government does not have to be greased with quite as much cooperation. There is one particular session, called "Question period", that is specifically blustery and cantankerous by nature. Question period's entire purpose is to offer opposition leaders the opportunity to rise, red-faced and angry, and basically shout rhetorical questions and political campaign slogans at the Prime Minister and leaders, who will then rise and respond with non-answers and political campaign slogans of their own.

Here in the city, we have an election of our own coming up on Monday. Our choice for mayor is between three guys: Bob Chiarelli, longtime mayor and architect of a plan for a billion dollar Light Rail system that doesn't go anywhere, Alex Cullen, a former city counselor, a fellow with more sensible light rail plans but a perceived record of spending like a drunken sailor, and Larry O'Brien, a businessman with absolutely no experience in politics whatsoever (other than sitting on some some board of trades and business committees) yet who decided to go straight for the top job.

Not an inspiring set of choices. Chiarelli is polling way down at the bottom, so I might vote for Alex Cullen to help fend off the inexperienced businessman. Or I might vote for the inexperienced businessman to fend off the drunken sailor. But either way, I won't be doing it happily.

BUSHORDUCK.COM

Every once in a while I come up with something that makes me laugh at myself. Today's one of those days. I heard the term "lame duck" on the news today, and it just came to me. :-)

Oozing love

In a Yahoo discussion thread the other day, people were asked to say something good about another religion. One woman said that Christians "ooze love." We may leave a lot of bad impressions in other ways, but I've heard other people say this about us. At our best, we do ooze love.

I got to witness that tonight. I have a friend who is suffering from a serious chronic illness. So a whole bunch of people went over to his place to sing him his favourite hymns, pray over him, and ask for blessings upon him. I saw what love looks like tonight. And it is very beautiful.

Guitarman

My brother in law gave me a tripod for Christmas last year. The result? A cheap guitar player trying to take his own publicity shots.

Ugh! 

I boycott Trans-fats

When I go down the supermarket aisle, now, for our weekend snacks, I will pick up the bag that I really want - cheese bits, popcorn, potato chips, bits and bytes. Yes, I pick up the bag, and turn it over, inspecting the ingredients. If I see trans-fats, I put it back on the shelf and refuse to buy it.

So this is my message to vendors of these junk foods. I am something more powerful than any government trying to ban your cooking or deep frying process. I am more frightening to you than yesterday's ghouls and ghosts, or even today's consumer advocates and medical professionals.

I am your customer. Correction - I am your ex-customer, and potential future customer. I do not buy your product right now, because I do not want your product to kill me. You want my money? Ditch the trans-fats.

Spooktacular

Probably for the last time , I took my daughter out trick or treating. She might not have gone even this year, but I think she felt sorry for me.

I was thinking yesterday how differently time must be passing for my other daughter: when your children are babies, time seems to pass so slowly. The routine of changing diapers, warming milk, burping just goes and goes... and slowly fades into the routine of putting up the baby gate and watching the baby bounce in the jolly jumper.
It feels like you have eternity. But you don't, and one day you turn around and your children are grown. And your grandchildren - well - they spend almost no time as a baby. She's already crawling.... crawling!

My wife and our neighbour decorated the front lawn in spooktacular fashion. That's what these are!